CrossFirst Bankshares, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Cross First Bank Shares Inc. Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Daly, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Cross First Bank Share's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Before we begin, please be aware this call will include forward-looking statements, including statements about our business plans, expansion and growth opportunities, expense control initiatives, sources of liquidity, capital allocation strategies, and our future financial performance. These comments are based on our current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Our forward-looking statements are as of the date of this call, and we do not assume any obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law. Statements made on this call should be considered together with the risk factors identified in today's earnings release and our other filings with the SEC. We may also refer to adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release. These non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be a substitute for or superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our presentation will include prepared remarks from Mike Maddox, President and CEO of Cross First Bank Shares, Randy Rapp, President of Cross First Bank, and Ben Klaus, CFO of Cross First Bank Shares. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, our operator, Anthony, will facilitate a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mike, who will begin on slide five of the presentation available on our website and filed with our earnings release. Mike?

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm very proud of this quarter and the great job that our team is doing. We are seeing the benefits of the investments we have made over the last 24 months. We continue to execute on our strategic plans this quarter with growth in operating revenue, core deposits, and earnings despite a difficult macro environment for banking. We delivered 7% growth in adjusted earnings this quarter with adjusted net income of $18.6 million or $0.37 per share. We remain focused on improving profitability by scaling our franchise in our high-growth dynamic markets and verticals, optimizing our expense base and driving efficiency, all while remaining diligent on credit quality. Pressure on our margin has slowed due to some normalization of pricing for deposits. We also continue to benefit from our highly variable loan portfolio. Our focus as a company is on earnings and profitability growth and less so on balance sheet growth as we drive improved efficiency and operating leverage. Competition for deposits continues to be strong. Despite that, however, our funding composition continues to improve as core deposits increased while wholesale borrowings declined and our loan-to-deposit ratio improved this past quarter. As expected, our loan portfolio grew modestly this quarter, and we continue to see nice balance in our loan mix. Additionally, I'm pleased to share that our SBA lending platform continues to gain traction across our markets and is accelerating our non-interest income growth. Credit quality continues to be a primary focus, especially in the face of the number, excuse me, of challenging external factors. Our overall credit quality remains at manageable levels that are well within acceptable norms. Randy will cover credit in more detail in a moment, but let me just say that I remain confident in our high-quality credit standards, our well-diversified portfolio, and more importantly, our relationship-based client approach. During this past quarter, we completed our Tucson acquisition, which complements our existing Arizona franchise and provides additional liquidity and lower-cost deposits. We were excited to welcome our new shareholders, clients, and team members and look forward to supporting the needs of the Tucson community. We expect to have our Tucson clients fully onboarded to our systems by mid-November. Looking ahead, we are in a unique position with the opportunity to increase profitability through multiple levers, scaling our existing investments, optimizing expenses, and maintaining a focus on credit quality. We have the opportunity to increase profitability by gaining density in our dynamic high-growth metro markets and verticals. In addition, we intend to continue to prudently manage expenses, including an ongoing focus on optimizing operations leveraging key technology and infrastructure investments. Finally, maintaining solid credit quality is at the center of everything we do. Our team is focused on these priorities, which we believe position CrossFirst for the future while enhancing our franchise value. And now I'd like to turn the call over to our president of CrossFirst Bank, Randy Rapp.